

I asked 2 Japanese teachers (native speakers both) whether the sentence
"カバンに本があります" was correct in Japanese. Surprisingly, one claimed it is
perfectly fine, while the other claimed it is wrong, and should be
"カバンのなかに本があります" or "カバンに本が入っています" instead.

Questions:

  1. Which answer is correct?
  2. How can such a basic sentence lead to such radically opposed answers?


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particle-に
Is "カバンに本があります" correct?


At best I can guess what's going on with your teachers. (Caveat, I'm a
nonnative speaker.)

I think most people will understand you quite well if you say, カバンに本があります.

However, from the perspective of the other teacher, different ideas might be
going through their head. In English, we have somewhat specific prepositions
to make clear what we mean. We can say "there's a book in the bag". That
corresponds to カバンの中に本があります。We can also say "there's a book on the bag"
(imagine that bag is placed on a table and you placed the book on top of it).
This would correspond to カバンの上に本があります。

This last sentence, in English, might sound a little bit weird. It's not what
you necessarily expect to hear (you expect to hear "in"). So, if your student
(pretending we're teaching English) said, "there's a book on the bag", you
might correct them to say "there's a book on top of the bag". Why? Because
depending on one's native language, someone might say "on" when they should
really be saying "in". Or, you, as the teacher, have an unconscious bias for
expressing this idea in a particular way.

I suspect that, if you meant, "there's a book on the bag", it would be better
to say, カバンの上に本があります。 But, even if you said, カバンに本があります, and the person you're
speaking to can see there's a book on the bag, you'll be understood.

I get it, you're not asking about カバンの上に. But, I am trying to tease out why
two native speakers might have different ideas of the best way to instruct the
student.


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2023-11-11T04:22:09.493
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> カバンに本があります
>
> カバンのなかに本があります
>
> カバンに本が入っています

The three sentences are correct in Japanese.

> How can such a basic sentence lead to such radically opposed answers?

Teachers are human as well. A common theme among _some_ Japanese teachers is
to believe that they know better than you (of course they do, they are the
teacher after all). In my experience, this is sometimes taken to the point of
dumbing down or simplifying their explanation to make their point across, and
there is an expectation that the student should just take the teacher at their
word.

That is to say, instead of entering an intrincate discussion about the nuances
between カバンに本があります and カバンのなかに本があります, the second teacher's train of thought
might have gone along the lines "they are a beginner anyway and I am going to
confuse them more than helping them. Moreover, they should learn the basic
grammar point のなかに, so let's tell them this is the right answer so they learn
it well".

As a learner I think your best course of action to take is what you've already
done, i.e. not taking anyone's word at face value and asking for second
opinions.


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IMO you can say カバンに本があります but only if the bag is stationary and at some
distance from you. It’d be similar to 家に本があります. If you are holding the bag it
does sound a bit odd to me and I’d rather say カバンに本が入ってます.

Similarly if the bag is moving (in a moving vehicle etc), even if it’s away
from me I’d also not say あります.

Maybe it has some geographical or individual variance.


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2023-11-14T08:06:09.937
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